[aprssig] Does the text "EMERGENCY" mean the real thing?

[Andrew P.]

Greetings, all.

I've just been noticing an annoying glitch in my APRS client, and it's because someone is sending a beacon message with the word "EMERGENCY" (all capital letters) in it. Are APRS clients supposed to trigger emergency handling on status messages with this text (since they don't have Mic-E status codes)? I noticed that other sites sending out messages with this text deliberately mangled the text or used mixed case so beaconing for an Emergency Operations Center wouldn't make everybody's clients go berserk every time the beacon showed up.

So, is my client behaving correctly for this new beacon (and the user defining it is incorrect), or is my client program behaving incorrectly?

Here's the message:

}K7CCN>BEACON,qAR,K7ILO-1:KK7CCN: CLARK COUNTY OEM EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS CENTER

I know that !EMERGENCY! is supposed to be the equivalent of a MicE status, but what about without the enclosing "!"?

Just curious.

Andrew Pavlin, KA2DDO
 		 	   		  
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